As a 10 year old, this film was where it was at. I loved this movie, loved the music, loved their outfits. I wanted to start my own girl group, a fantasy I had since idolizing TLC and Destiny's Child in kindergarten. This movie reignited that girly dream. 18 years later I rewatched this film and my goodness, even for a direct to TV film, there's no forgiveness for how bad this movie really is. It will always have a special place in my heart, but one has to objectively look at things at some point.

The main characters, Galleria (Raven Symoné) and Chanel (Adrienne Bailon) are very shallow and one dimensional; Galleria more than Chanel. Chanel has her moments where she shows that deep down she has a heart, especially when she learns Dorinda's (Sabrina Bryan) secret. Dorinda is the only character you can sympathize with. She's friendly, down to earth, she appreciates everything she has and the music career would just be the cherry on top, the movie does an injustice in not spending enough time with her character. Aqua (Kiley Williams) is the definition of a background character, we learn nothing about her except that she's from the South and carries hot sauce in her bag.

Galleria is the least likable character in the entire thing. She starts off not so bad, we see her stand her own ground against the boys who tease them, she hypes up each of the girls in the group, she's almost like the glue that holds them together. As soon as the possibility of signing a big record deal comes up, she becomes a nightmare and the movie spends too much time on her. To the point that the movie should've just been called 'Galleria.' We watch her fight her mom, humiliate her friends, and when Chanel explains to her Dorinda's home situation, she shrugs it off and says "Guess she needs this more than any of us." I mean... why on earth should we root for this character ? Why is the movie so focused on her ? Her character development isn't that great, she doesn't really change her ways. She just is happy that the other girls didn't take the record deal without her. Even as a kid, I always wanted to punch Galleria for being mean, as an adult that feeling hasn't changed. The movie is way too centered on her, when it shouldn't be. Sure she's the one who writes the songs, but it gives her no right to act the way she does. When this issue is brought up during the argument scene, Chanel tells her that some of those songs were her ideas. One of many instances where I have to ask why didn't the movie show this instead of focusing completely on Galleria ?

Both Chanel and Galleria come from wealthy families. Chanel is being raised by a single, ex-model, mom who is more focused on holding on to her youth with some new boyfriend than her kid. I think their situation was more interesting than Galleria's clashes with her mom. In one scene Chanel gets upset that her mom is not around to hear her out and so has cancelled the promised shopping date that was supposed to help Chanel feel better, so what does the mom do ? She leaves her credit card on the kitchen counter for Chanel to go out and buy something nice for herself. Chanel's way of getting back at her mom, maxing out the card and putting her mom in debt. Spoiled girl, first world problems. But don't worry, the movie makes up for this by having her think about Dorinda and buy her a new Cheetah print vest, since Galleria had humiliated her the previous day for wearing the same clothes everyday. That's how we learn Dorinda is a foster child and lives in an alley way behind a nice apartment building. Dorinda explains to her why even without the music career their friendship has been the best thing that's happened to her. Leaving you to wonder, why didn't the movie follow her around more ? Instead we just watched the two spoiled girls not get their way and sulk enough until they get it. Chanel I have more patience with cos her situation at home was more complicated than Galleria's. A lot could've been done with the other 3 characters, but as mentioned before, the movie is too focused on Galleria.

Now for what makes this movie comically bad, I mean I get that it's a Disney Channel movie but this was just not a forgivable misuse of movie budget money. The final, ultimate conflict of the film was Galleria's dog falling in a hole in a construction site and getting dirty. Now this is a situation that could easily be solved by having the construction workers lower something down to lift the dog up, but apparently the dog is not responsive to the help unless The Cheetah Girls sing. This story is breaking news worthy, we see Galleria on a big screen asking for someone to please save her dog. This is like a 'Batman signal' to the other Cheetah Girls and they show up and sing along with Galleria to the dog and the dog finally complies. After that the girls make up because they didn't sign the record deal without Galleria and they do a performance that gets shown on live television and the idiot record producer regrets that he didn't sign them.

Now I know Disney Channel movies are not meant to be cinematic masterpieces, I accept that, but this, they crossed the line and we let them. We enabled them. Disney just said "eff it, the audience is a bunch of little kids anyway" and released this. It worked, cos my 10 year old self adored this film but as an adult who loves the art of cinema and good storytelling, this movie is insulting. It was an early step in diversity and it even has the characters mention this throughout the film. Still it wasn't enough to forgive the other major mistakes this movie made. I don't know what the budget is for these Disney Channel movies but regardless if it's a lot or a little, there's no excuse for the half-assed production they put together. This is one of many films that Disney Channel just regurgitates and makes millions off of and looking back it's incredibly insulting to its young viewers. It's possible to make children films that are really good and they don't have to be Oscar worthy projects, hence the first 2 "Home Alone" movies and "School of Rock" - you can argue the latter wasn't for kids, but let's be real it was a staple from millennials' childhoods. As for character writing, this does have an effect on young viewers. I can thankfully say I didn't grow up to be a Chanel or Galleria, but a lot of girls in my class looked up to these characters and so thought their behaviors were ok, not everyone is strong minded. What was Disney thinking ? Thankfully the Lizzie McGuire movie was out the same year and that held more of a cultural significance than this. Lizzie is a much better role model who had real character development and never put either of her parents in debt.

Again, The Cheetah Girls will always hold a special place in my heart, but let's be real now. This movie is a cinematic disaster.

This is another made-for-TV film and as such is a film that is not high on intellectual output but, if you just sit down and as with Charlies Angels 1 and 2 (the ones with Cameron Diaz, Bill Murray etc.) leave your brain at the door and just enjoy the film for what it is (which is a film about four mid to late teens trying to make it big as self-choreographed (by one of the group members) singers in the music industry) then you should have no problem liking or even loving the film.

The film centres on four teenagers (the characters' ages not the actresses) but around them is the usual thoroughfare that is seen in these types of films. There was the unscrupulous record boss that wanted to change them and their style. There was the mother/manager that against her better judgement allowed her daughter and the group to almost get done by him and there was the silly ending that brought the girls back together after one was even less willing to follow the boss's ideas even more than the other three and walked away from the group. The other three eventually decided she was right and also left but by then the group was no more until the silly ending that is. Knowing and accepting that it was following the usual plot lines for this type of film meant it could be enjoyed and yes the second one was better but this one was by no means as bad as others have made it out to be. 8 out of 10 for me.

I've read some of the comments on the cheetah girls movie, and I'm surprised at how hard the ADULTS have been on this movie. I'm 16 now, but this movie came out when I was 9 or 10. And all this talk about how unrealistic it was, is STUPID. Of course it's gonna be silly and unrealistic, but this is a CHILD'S MOVIE. Disney caters to ages 6-14, although at that time not many teens watched it so it was probably around 6-11 at the time. I LOVED the movie, and so did all of my friends. We didn't see these girls as rich (nor did we care) as some people have claimed, we didn't sit there contemplating the roles of the characters, and we didn't even think that no one would care about Toto being stuck in a hole at the end, because to us at that age, that was a plausible reason for the police and firefighters to come. Unrealistic? Maybe. But we were KIDS. We cared about Toto and the girls' friendship. Fame wasn't the moral to us, friendship was, at least, that's what I got out of it. So before you rate this like it's an adult/teen lifetime/feature film, think about it from the standpoint of who it was made for, the kids.